Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to: a server to be employed in a pull printing system, which puts in a spool queue of the server, print jobs received from user terminals such as personal computers and transfers one of those in the spool queue to a printing apparatus such as an image forming apparatus to perform printing, when receiving a user's print instructions from the printing apparatus; a print job control method for the server; and a recording medium with a print job control program being stored thereon.
Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
Conventionally, when receiving a user's print instructions from a printing apparatus, such a server employed in a pull printing system as described above transferred to the printing apparatus all the print jobs connected to the user among those in a spool queue. Receiving the print jobs connected to the user, the printing apparatus had to execute them all.
Actually some of the print jobs may not be really needed for the user. For example, some of the print jobs may have been left in the spool queue because of being no longer needed or may have been put into the spool queue double for the second time by mistake and left therein without being deleted. However, the printing apparatus had to execute all the print jobs including such not really needed ones as described above, which caused a waste of copy paper, communication time, and print time.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2009-297990 discloses an image forming apparatus comprising a job data storage which stores authorized print jobs, the image forming apparatus being configured to display a list of a user's authorized print jobs so that the user can confirm, if a predetermined number of the user's authorized jobs or more is stored on the job storage.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2009-040010 discloses a network printing apparatus being configured to extract print data from a print job in a spool queue and store the print data on a user folder, if the period of time that the print job waits in the spool queue exceeds a certain standard value.
However, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2009-297990 only discloses an image forming apparatus being configured to display a list of a user's authorized print jobs if a predetermined number or more of the user's authorized jobs is stored on the job storage, not providing a perfect solution to the problem of a waste of copy paper, communication time, and print time because the image forming apparatus still has to execute all the print jobs including not really needed ones such as those having been left in the spool queue because of being no longer needed and those having been put into the spool queue double for the second time by mistake and left therein without being deleted.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2009-040010 only discloses a network printing apparatus being configured to judge whether or not to store on a user folder, a print job in a spool queue depending on the length of the period of time that the print job waits in the spool queue. That is, a print job having been left in a spool queue for more than a certain period of time for some reason is automatically stored on a user folder even though it is really needed. This required users to read it out from the user folder before executing, making the user operation troublesome.
The description herein of advantages and disadvantages of various features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed in other publications is in no way intended to limit the present invention. Indeed, certain features of the invention may be capable of overcoming certain disadvantages, while still retaining some or all of the features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed therein.